Swedish lunch lady told food is to good and told to reduce quality for fairness

[Deleted]

What? It's not her that needs to "dumb" down, it's the other schools that need to follow her example and make good food, with love and care, like if you were making it for yourself or your children.

Good to know someone in school makes good effort in feeding well the children.

[Kuniku]

thats just silly, surely if the other schools don't get the same top notch food and start complaining about it THOSE schools should improve their food to match? O_o

[Jackmoves]

thats just silly, surely if the other schools don't get the same top notch food and start complaining about it THOSE schools should improve their food to match? O_o

I doubt it's the other schools complaining, it's probably local politicians that got this fab idea, some elected people are just fucking retarded, the good thing is they've realized the entire world laughs at them now so they've said it was a "misunderstanding" so she can continue her good work... BS of course, they are just trying to save face.

[Deleted]

the school director at that school is an idiot. period. The launch lady should go to another school where they cheer on her rather then put spikes in her way.

However, seems there was an update to this:
http://www.dt.se/nyheter/falun/1.517...-i-skolan-igen

"After the meeting, they agreed that Annika Ericsson will continue to bake bread and make salads and vegetables suited to the season.

- "This has been so the whole time, so it's nothing new. Now it feels very positive to be able to go to work and do a good job," says Annica Ericsson. She is very happy for all the support she had received.

Dietary manager Catherine Lindberg talks about a communications failure."

And all it took is me reading the comments. So this whole article is just a means to bash countries with more socialist measures. Well done article writers, you fooled a lot of people.

[Keske]

This has nothing to do with leftwing politics nor does it have to do anything with Sweden as a country, because they issue here is universal. It's called greed. What she does in the end will cost the school more per portion per child. Using the whole "It's not fair" excuses, is exactly that an excuse. The directors probably wanted another boat, or extension on their house, so they looked at what costs was easiest to cut.

I entered a new school back in the days and we recieved absolutley fantastic food everyday, tailormade to fit the way school food is cooked (ie, alot of food cooked at once), because they needed to get a good reputation so that new students would go there. If I go back there today I doubt they have nearly as good food, teachers or facilities that they used to because they are now a fairly big school that always gets students every year. And when that happens the cutbacks starts rolling in.

[Deleted]

Ok, this is stupid, but it has a reason to be. A stupid reason, but still a reason: apparently the city council is who organizes and funds the meals for the public schools. So, when the parents of the other schools complained that the food in their schools was crappy and that they wanted food as good as they had in the school were Annika works... they realized that it would be expensive to raise the quality in all schools, so the cheapest way to end the parents' complaints was to reduce the quality in that one school. Instead of the sensible choice, which would be enforce the buying plan used in Annika's school for all the other schools.

[Raphtheone]

First time I've ever heard that someone who loves what he or she does should tone down the performance. What's next? They ask the A+ students to tone it down? Yeah, that must look much better on paper.

And for the record, I see this is a local problem, not a national one. There's some guy, somewhere, who made a decision. Doesn't mean the entire nation is in a similar state (unless it's the PM or similar who made the call). Of course, questionable decisions have been made virtually everywhere, it's nothing new really. Hopefully they'll apologize and correct this.

[Oakshan]

I agree and that is what I think really bothered a lot of people. I know this only applies to school lunches. However, their incredibly stupid attitude could be applied to as you said "A+ students are making other people feel inferior...that's not right" or "hey that school over there looks to nice and other people don't like that". Over here, I'm reminded of the "no child left behind" which seems to really discourage challenging our best and brightest.

So, as you can see, this can happen anywhere until people step back and realize you aren't encouraging people to excel and really care about their work.

[Deleted]

First time I've ever heard that someone who loves what he or she does should tone down the performance. What's next? They ask the A+ students to tone it down?

Actually I've been asked by a teacher in "högstadiet" (pretty much our equivalent of highschool) to stop raising my hand on every question. This even though most of them time no one else raised their hand and if anyone else did, they would get to answer first. Only if they were way off would the question actually go to me. What was the reason you might ask? "because it causes a feeling of inadequacy in the other kids since they don't know as much as you".

This isn't actually anything new in Sweden. It's been going on for a very very long time and contrary to popular belief it has nothing to do with political standpoint. It is born from a national desire of fitting in and not diverting from the norm that is present among the older generation of our people.

[Raphtheone]

Actually I've been asked by a teacher in "högstadiet" (pretty much our equivalent of highschool) to stop raising my hand on every question. This even though most of them time no one else raised their hand and if anyone else did, they would get to answer first. Only if they were way off would the question actually go to me. What was the reason you might ask? "because it causes a feeling of inadequacy in the other kids since they don't know as much as you".

This isn't actually anything new in Sweden. It's been going on for a very very long time and contrary to popular belief it has nothing to do with political standpoint. It is born from a national desire of fitting in and not diverting from the norm that is present among the older generation of our people.

You're not describing nation-specific behavior, it's in human nature to belong, to fit in, and to be afraid of and shun the different, or unknown. I was the same way as you in låg- and mellanstadiet (year 1-6), but I stopped doing it. Why? No one cared that I knew the answers. I didn't have to raise my arm to answer. If no one else raised theirs, or as you say the one that did was way off, I got to answer it regardless. Never once was I told to start answering the questions with wrong answers on purpose for "feel-good" reasons. That'd be absolutely, mindblowingly ludicrous.

The police don't stop people driving nice cars and ask them to either buy a mediocre car or vandalize it a bit with some paint. They don't ask our current financial minister to make some bad calls because he's proven to be adept at what he does. The best surgeons get the best paying jobs (they are rewarded for their success!), they're not asked to purposfully kill patients to get their mortality rate up to the rest of the surgeons. And if you're the boss at this big company with your own secretary, and (s)he does some damn sweet coffee, you won't ask him/her to crap it down a bit, since the coffee is too good. I've never heard a woman say "you kiss so good you make all my exes look like first-timers, you should start doing obvious mistakes", either to me or to anyone else that I know. The list goes on to every thing that is above average. You don't shorten trees in the forest because it offends the other, smaller trees. A hedge I can get, it's aestethics and is something completely different (like how you line up for a school photo and similar).

You shouldn't discourage success, but encourage others to do the same (note: not expect, encourage). This is something every society that I've ever heard of (even the ones that makes you go "wtf?") does, and the topic of this thread really makes me go wtf. If this isn't the sign of small-penis syndrome, incompetence, and/or jealousy, I don't know what is.

[Jackmoves]

Sweden has the Law of Jante deeply rooted in the "national soul", thats no suprise to anyone, there are good things with that and bad things, I think we are moving away from it though, but I hope we can keep the good things that comes with it.

The ten rules state:

Don't think you're anything special.
Don't think you're as good as us.
Don't think you're smarter than us.
Don't convince yourself that you're better than us.
Don't think you know more than us.
Don't think you are more important than us.
Don't think you are good at anything.
Don't laugh at us.
Don't think anyone cares about you.
Don't think you can teach us anything.

Of course no Swede follow that by the letter but it certainly exist to a degree, esp among the older people. Some characteristics that has come from this are good though, the DIY attitude etc. Of course that seems to be quite lacking in todays youth. :P

[Wixwix]

My country is retarded, I apologize to you, rest of the world.

[Deleted]

Hey at least they get to eat lunch.

Indeed better than the options many people got in us - starving!

[DEATHETERNAL]

"Fairness" is not something government should be in the business of forcing upon everyone in every facet of their life, checkbook, or anything else.

[PACOX]

Only in Europe

[Deleted]

This nicely sums up left-wing governments: Equality rather than quality is the goal. What you have is irrelevant; all that matters is what you have relative to your neighbors. And of course, everything is brought down to the worst available.

Our government is more right-wing though.

I mean, we're not talking GOP right-wing, but on the right side of politics.